time established in her little flat not very far away in Washington Square.

The retrenchments in the Upton household had taken place and Mary found
her friend putting her shoulder to the wheel with melancholy courage. The
keeping up of old beneficences meant redoubled labor and, as she said to
Mary, with the smile that Mary found so wonderful: "It seems to me now that
whenever I put my hand out to help, it gets caught and pinched." Mary,
helper and admirer, said to Jack that the way in which Imogen had gathered
up her threads, allowing hardly one to snap, was too beautiful. These young
people, like the minor characters in a play, met often in the drawing-room
while Imogen was busy up-stairs or gone out upon some important errand.
Just now, Miss Bocock's lectures having been set going, the organization
of a performance to be given for the crippled children's country home was
engaging all her time. Tableaux from the Greek drama had been fixed on, the
Pottses were full of eagerness, and Jack had been pressed into service as
stage-manager. The distribution of roles, the grouping of the pictures, the
dressing and the scenery were in his hands.

"It's really extraordinary, the way in which, amidst her grief, she goes
through all this business, all this organization, getting people together
for her committee, securing the theater," said Mary. "Isn't it too bad that
she can't be in the tableaux herself? She would have been the loveliest of
all."

Jack, rather weary, after an encounter with a band of dissatisfied
performers in the library, said: "One could have put one's heart into
making an Antigone of her; that's what I wanted--the filial Antigone,
leading Oedipus through the olive groves of Colonus. It's bitter, instead
of that, to have to rig Mrs. Scott out as Cassandra; will you believe it,
Mary, she insists on being Cassandra--with that figure, that nose! And she